P&O Ferries

The UK’s leading ferry operator P&O Ferries has selected the TSP847 from Star Micronics to print all windscreen ‘hangers’ for vehicles leaving for France from Dover. P&O Ferries boasts the largest fleet of ships in the UK, offering a wide range of services and facilities, the most comprehensive route network and the most frequent passenger and freight services to the Continent.

P&O Ferries has purchased 160 TSP847’s for use in the drive through check-in booth at the Dover and Calais ports. Two printers are being used in each booth. One is being used to print on the actual hanger which is placed in the windscreen. Details printed on this include the number of passengers in the vehicle, parking lane, boarding information etc. The other TSP847 is being used to print customer receipts and vouchers, such as discounts on wine for example, for use on board the ferry during the crossing.

P&O was looking for a printer to fulfil very specific criteria. A fast throughput speed for the hangers was essential, as was the width and weight of the paper stock – the hangers needed to be printed on a wide, heavy 150 gsm paper. The TSP847 easily met all of P&O’s specifications – printing at an impressive 150mm per second, the TSP847 is capable of taking paper stock up to 112mm wide and 150 gsm. However, it was the fanfold function that sealed the deal, making the printer much easier and quicker to use for this particular application.

Other features on the TSP847 were however of equal importance when it came to making the final decision. Mark Newton at P&O Ferries commented, “We selected the TSP847 from Star Micronics for its reliability and speed of printing along with the capability of using the Ethernet interface. The printers are working well for us in this harsh environment.”

Supplied by DED Limited, the TSP800 is a very fast thermal barcode, label, receipt and ticket printer which features a unique paper width of 112mm wide on papers of up to 150gsm in weight and all in a printer only 180mm wide! Without any software changes, the unique scalable raster driver allows the TSP800 to print pages which are scaled down from A4 to A6 and still be perfectly readable, making it ideal for use as a compact Internet printer or even as a kiosk printer.

The TSP800 uses Star’s simple “Drop-In & Print” paper loading feature and can accept paper rolls of various widths. An external paper feed path for large diameter and fanfold tickets is standard. Interfacing is no problem thanks to a choice of RS232C Serial, Parallel, USB, Ethernet or WiFi interfaces. The TSP800 has a host of extra features including two colour printing, wall and desk mount brackets, interchangeable interfaces and drivers for most operating systems.